So do we just… fuck over all the renters living in landlord-owned units for the next 5-20 years while this cool new mass public housing is being built by all those extra construction workers we definitely don’t have a shortage of?

What is this supposed to prove?

I agree! However, it will take a lot of time and carefully crafted policy to make that happen, without perverse incentives appearing. In the meantime, we have to live in the real world and deal with landlords as a (hopefully temporary) fact of life.

Landlords are not philanthropists. You are not going to find a big group of homeowners who want to rent at a loss out of the goodness of their own hearts.

I would love if the government took strong measures to encourage home ownership and discourage treating real estate as an investment. Really, I would. But that will take many years of hard work and economics PhDs to concoct a plan that works. So, until we find a government with the balls to do that for real, we have to understand that dealing with landlords in a realistic way is a necessary evil.

Because if you nuke rentals without first ensuring people can afford to buy, all you’ll accomplish is to create a mass housing shortage worse than you’ve ever seen.

Good luck in your search! We’re very lucky to have actually just found a buyer for the full list price, but yeah, the market is rough right now

Well, with real estate in general, you can either sell fast at a lower price or wait and maybe get a bit of a higher price. But I agree, €1.4 is just not gonna happen, and it’s too risky to stay in that market much longer anyways.

Crossings can be easily improved to reduce this by adding buttons and flashing lights, and having a delay on the walk sign so cars have plenty of time to stop before anyone goes onto the road. These are not hard problems to solve.

“Massive metal boxes” – ah, so you’re one of those car-hater types. Gotcha.

Fair enough. We could learn quite a bit from Germany, for example.

The day train travel, or any form of transit, becomes genuinely pleasant in Ontario, I will gladly use it quite often. I’d like to know why it is that in several European countries, seats are rotatable so you don’t have to awkwardly face strangers, but we don’t have that. Or why our trains are painfully slow by comparison.

Running a red ≠ going through a yellow. The latter is legal – that’s the whole point of a yellow, to give warning for folks who are a bit too late to stop.

Does that mean you want to time lights to be green if you go the proper speed, then? As in, none of this “traffic calming” bullshit.

There is, sadly, a tradeoff between safety and efficiency. If we truly valued safety above everything, we’d ban cars altogether and return to the 1800s. But we have accepted as a society that a small number of accidents is worth the benefit of rapid transportation.

I measured, actually. On average, I save 20% on my trip length, which is quite significant for someone who drives a lot.

I have NEVER gone through a red, and yet I routinely substantially speed. There’s no excuse for running reds. If your reaction time is too shitty to stop quick enough, drive slower. But some of us have very fast reaction times indeed.

Maybe we should endeavor to, idk, not have children and families out on the street in non-designated crossings? Just a wild thought. XD

Good. Let’s hope similar petitions pop up in other cities too.

She gets a 10% cut for managing the property for all this time, and paying out of pocket for various repairs. As a result, she unfortunately has an interest in seeing the sale price be as high as it can be. She lives in the villa next door.

I agree. I’m nudging them to lower it to €1.3m and see if it sells. There have been tentative offers for €1.0m to €1.1m, but that’s awfully low, considering where the property is. It’s in a highly desirable, affluent district.

The gall of you people. Wow.

Maybe we should focus on stopping them being on the road to begin with?